


Deliverance

by Karios



Category: Salvation (TV)
Genre: Bedside Hand-Holding, Bedside Vigils, F/M, Hospitals, Introspection, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-08-27 03:09:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16694308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Karios/pseuds/Karios
Summary: Shortly after their discovery in the field, Darius's overtaxed body collaspes. As Grace waits to see whether Darius will wake up, she finally has time to think.





	Deliverance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flipflop_diva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/gifts).



> Spoilers for pretty much everything.
> 
> Many thanks to Morbane who found time around hectic modly duties to check this for me. She is the best!

The hospital was nearly silent. Almost everyone had left to await an end of the world that was no longer coming. Grace was instead enduring a second beside vigil for Darius, who had collapsed shortly after they discovered the truth about the asteroid-slash-spaceship. She was glad Liam and Harris knew enough to be able to hook Darius up to all of these machines. She thought she probably should have asked one of them to stay, as they'd have the ability to do something if one of the numbers went drastically wrong.

And yet, she was grateful they hadn't stuck around: she wouldn't have known what to say if they had. She wanted, needed, space to just think. They were alive, almost impossibly alive. Well, she was alive. Darius just lay there, too quiet and too still, his manic energy petered down to nothing. The only thing that proved to her that Darius was still there was the steady whir-click-hum of machines reporting his vitals. She drew another blanket up over him to keep him warm, careful not to dislodge anything, and settled one of his hands between her own, resting her head on the empty patch of bed beside him to settle in to wait.

In a few short hours, the sun would dawn on a day few had expected to see. Those in the bunkers would emerge to a world that was as they had abandoned it. They would live alongside those who had been left for dead on the surface. There would be another, likely violent, reckoning. For that selfishness, and for the series of miscalculations that preceded it. There was much work yet to be done, to cobble the world back together into normalcy. It would take that work and time, maybe as much as a generation's worth, to heal the divides that had torn the world apart. At least as long to grieve the hurt and the loss. And still the fight wasn't over: depending on the whims of their alien visitors, it might be only beginning. Even if the aliens meant them no harm, for people of certain kinds of faith, she imagined extraterrestrial visitors were quite troubling. Not for Grace, whose faith had only ever lain with the man beside her, whose belief in Darius had never wavered, even as she took vows she didn't mean.

Grace had told Harris she would follow the last scintilla of hope. Zoey had convinced her to chase it until the end. Her hope had culminated in the world’s survival, and in stopping Harris before he sent the nuclear missiles. She would hold onto that hope until Darius opened his bright, beautiful brown eyes. She would accept nothing less. They could not be given back the world only for Grace to lose her own. It was wrong to call Darius her world, without clearing it with the man himself first, but she loved him, and dammit, she was entitled to be a bit melodramatic after the events of the last six months.

In spite of every horrible minute of the last six months, Grace was, against all better reason, grateful to the aliens. This near-apocalypse had given her Darius. While it was not inconceivable that she might have met Darius Tanz some other way – he might have attended some function at White House, for example – she wouldn't have known the full measure of the man. She might have been charmed by him, his brilliance, his confidence, his enthusiasm. But she'd never have met the version of Darius Tanz who was willing to do whatever it took to ensure Earth's survival, who would gladly lay down his life for others, who would stand on her doorstep and declare that his final days were hers to share if she would have him. She wouldn't have had Darius's confidence. She wouldn't have shared his innermost thoughts. She wouldn't have shared his mouth or his body or his heart. She knew now that she would gladly trade the world for one man. One beautiful, impossible, wonderful man.

It wasn't as though he had had much to compete with – pre-asteroid (and god was it weird to remember there had been a time before the asteroid), her close friends had started and ended with Harris. Anyone else she might have counted back then hadn't mattered during the apocalypse and therefore didn't account for much now. Zoe, Dylan, and her grandchild-to-be mattered, of course, but Zoe's world was bigger than Grace. That left only her job. Her position as speechwriter was gone, cannibalized by four successive Presidential administrations in one year.

She was unexpectedly fine with that, though, and realized she wouldn't take her job back if President Thomason did offer it. The next crisis was someone else's problem, not hers. Relief seized her like a tangible thing. A near-hysterical bubble of laughter escaped her lips at the thought. It echoed in the too-quiet air.

Seconds later, chilled fingertips moved against her palm. Grace sat bolt upright, holding her breath, hardly daring to believe.

Darius's eyes cracked open. “Can you keep it down?” he croaked. “Some of us are trying to sleep.”

Grace giggled again – she couldn't help it, too giddy with relief.

A second after that, his eyes opened fully. His head tilted forward. “The asteroid,” he said, voice urgent if not strong.

“Is an alien spaceship,” she reminded him, placing a hand over his chest to deter him from getting any further. “And someone else's responsibility until you're better. Really better this time, not just barely capable of being upright.”

“But –”

“Rest,” she ordered, then in a softer tone, “please?”

He capitulated, his head falling back against the pillow, his eyes sliding shut.

“Need anything?”

“Other than to get up?” he clarified.

“Darius –”

“No.” A pause. “Water?”

She filled a small paper cup from the sink for him, glad she didn't have to leave the room. She knew he would try to leave even knowing he wouldn't make it past the doorway before he collapsed. Grace held the cup with one hand and supported Darius's head with the other so he could sip without straining himself.

Darius grumbled, but accepted the help, a sign of how weak he must feel. She helped him to lie back and set the cup down on a bedside table so she could hold his hand again. His fingers squeezed hers.

So much of the future remained uncertain. But here, in this hospital, his hand in hers, Grace was certain of exactly one thing. She and Darius would get through whatever the future held, together.


End file.
